


An Unsavory Crowd

by avalonjoan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coming Out, First Kiss, M/M, Masturbation, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Serum, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:18:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avalonjoan/pseuds/avalonjoan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve finally has to stop trying to join the Army, another side of him comes out.  Bucky tries to keep him out of trouble, and learns a few things along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unsavory Crowd

It’s late, maybe two in the morning, and Bucky’s just fallen asleep when the phone rings. Steve. Calling from the police station. Ran into trouble and needs a hand getting home—cops won’t let him take a cab by himself. Bucky rolls out of bed with a groan and puts his work clothes back on, trudging the ten blocks to the station carrying an extra coat because it’s cold in the middle of this night—this is what you do when you’re friends with Steve Rogers.  
Steve had been vague about details on the phone, so Bucky’s pleasantly surprised to find him sitting on a bench in front of the main desk, languidly talking to the officer about the work he’s been doing as a copyeditor with the local paper. He smiles at Bucky when he comes in.

“James,” the officer says, beckoning him toward the desk with a finger. “Come here.”

Bucky leans in close, noticing that the officer is peering around to look at Steve as he speaks in a low voice. “Listen, we all know Steven. Kid’s got a heart of gold, and he’s had a rough few years, but he might be falling in with—” he hesitates, making a face, “an unsavory crowd, if you know what I mean. Just—keep an eye on him, make sure he stays out of trouble, okay?”

Bucky nods, even though he has no idea what the guy’s talking about. Nudging a drowsy Steve with his foot, he helps his friend to his feet and walks him out of the station. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just throws the coat over Steve’s shoulders and puts an arm around his shoulders to keep him from toppling over. They’re almost at their building when he asks, “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Steve shrugs. “Jus’ had too much to drink. ‘s no big deal, Buck.”

Sighing, Bucky ruffles Steve’s hair with the hand not currently being used for support. “Well, I don’t have to work tomorrow, so you picked a good night for your little adventure.”

The two of them walk up the stairs, Bucky making sure to take enough time with each step for Steve to comfortably keep up. Outside Steve’s door, Bucky watches as Steve fumbles through his pockets, dropping his keys on the floor beside a crumpled piece of paper. He crouches to pick them up before Steve can, not needing to unfold the paper to know what it is.

“Again?” He unlocks the door and hands the keys back to Steve.

“You won’t have to worry about it happening again,” Steve mutters, and for a second Bucky’s worried that someone actually let Steve join the Army, until the other man continues, “They circulated my picture to enlistment centers with instructions to press charges if I try to sign up again.”

Bucky hugs Steve to him, a hand on the back on his head. “I’m sorry, pal.”

Shrugging, Steve leans against Bucky’s chest. “I just wanted to do something that mattered. I just feel like a fool for thinking they’d ever take me.”

“You’ll figure something out.” Bucky ruffles Steve’s hair and leans back to look him in the eye, catching the smaller man off-balance. “But for now, go to bed. Bang on my door if you need me.” Steve nods, heading inside and closing the door. Bucky heads downstairs to his unit, shrugging off his own coat and draping it over the back on his chair.

The officer’s warning sticks in his head for the rest of the night.

* * *

 

That Friday evening, Bucky waits quietly in his kitchen until he hears the sound of Steve’s door slamming shut upstairs, followed by his syncopated steps down the stairs outside. He gives the other man a half-minute’s head start before taking off after him. There are enough people out on the sidewalk that he can follow Steve without being noticed. After a half-dozen blocks or so, Steve goes down a back alley, and Bucky hangs back, peering around the corner to watch. Steve exchanges a few words with one of the folks standing outside, and one of them opens the unmarked service door for him.

Bucky’s never been inside, but he’s heard of the place—it’s an old speakeasy that caters to a certain type of clientele. A place where the men can dress like women and the women can dress like whatever the hell they want. The police would raid the place every now and then, but usually someone paid them off enough to keep the place in business. It isn’t the type of place one would expect to find the neighborhood’s sickly orphan.

For a split-second, Bucky considers following him inside, but he’s too unsettled by the prospect of standing in a queer bar with his childhood best friend to even approach the door. Maybe this is it—where they go their different ways. They’ve stuck together for so long; Bucky’s held off on enlisting in the Army since he can’t just leave Steve behind. But Steve might be going somewhere Bucky can’t follow.

* * *

 

Bucky’s putting tomorrow’s lunch together and getting ready for bed when there’s a knock at the door. He finds Steve, out of breath, eyes wide, bracing himself against the doorway outside. Before Bucky can even formulate a sentence, Steve blurts, “Can I stay with you for the night?”

Stammering out an ‘of course,’ Bucky takes Steve by the shoulder and leads him inside. He pulls out a chair for his friend and sits him down, kneeling down to ask, “Christ, what happened?”

“I went out to a bar after work,” he explains in between breaths, “but someone threw a brick through the window and hit one guy in the head, and they cleared us out to make sure no one else got hurt, and I got caught up and had to leave my keys and jacket in the coat room.”

“Shit, Steve, did you run all the way from Roscoe’s without your coat?” Bucky gets up and strides into the living room, grabbing a blanket off of the couch and throwing it over Steve’s shoulders. It’s only after he’s crouching in front of Steve, ready to hear more of the story, when he realizes that Steve never told him the name of the bar. Steve avoids Bucky’s eyes, and the room is silent—they’re both holding their breath.

Quietly, Steve says, “I’ll stay out here on the couch. Sorry for all this.”

Bucky puts a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he almost-whispers, “It’s too cold for you to stay out here.” Steve’s expression goes from ashamed to confused and appreciative, and Bucky’s heart twists in his chest, knowing that his best friend had been bracing for rejection. Together, they carry the couch cushions into Bucky’s room and they each go to bed: Steve swimming in one of Bucky’s shirts as he drifts off under the extra blanket, and Bucky lying awake for far too long.

* * *

 

After Steve’s panicked flight from Roscoe’s, Bucky starts to worry about the other running into someone who gets their kicks from beating up queers. It wasn’t so bad when he was just concerned about Steve getting caught up in trouble with the police again, but the idea of someone trying to hurt him—Bucky can’t just let that happen. By now, he’s figured out Steve’s new routine; he spends the rest of the workweek anxiously awaiting his next night out. Steve avoids his eyes on the days they walk to work together.

He heads out a few minutes after Steve, slinking into the bar on the corner with a whiskey to wait. Two hours pass, and he worries that he might have missed Steve heading out, so he goes back outside, smoking anxiously just out of the streetlamp’s light. When his fingers are too cold to feel, he starts to think that he might have been a fool for waiting, for even trying to keep an eye on Steve. But after years of watching out for him, Bucky didn’t feel right leaving him to explore

Bucky follows Steve and the other guy down the street, making sure to leave enough space between them to keep from being noticed. They’re moving quickly, with the other man leading ever so slightly; eventually, he calls for Steve to follow him in between two tenements. The two men go right for the darkest corner, far from the street, and Bucky remembers all the times he’s pulled Steve out of tussles in alleys just like this one. In the shadows under the fire escape steps, hidden by a few trans cans, he decides to stay, since the worst case is that the guy’s a queer-basher luring in an easy target.

It only takes a few seconds for Bucky to ascertain that this isn’t a fight. Steve’s leaning against the brick wall, making little keening sounds and kissing the guy. There are hands everywhere: Steve’s scrabble for purchase against the other’s back, and the guy’s tangle with Steve’s hair and press against his hips. When their lips part, Bucky can hear bits of what they’re saying to each other—not endearments, but raunchy compliments and hushed offers. He watches Steve nod his head quickly, catching an intensity in his eyes as the other man kneels on the ground in front of him.

Steve covers his mouth with one hand to muffle a moan as the guy starts blowing him, and Bucky leans a little closer. His heart is racing and he palms at his growing erection through his trousers. Watching as Steve takes a handful of the man’s hair with his free hand and pulls his head closer, Bucky bites down on his lower lip and tries to keep his breathing steady.

Letting out a whispered stream of ‘oh fuck’ and ‘god yes’ and occasionally ‘please,’ Steve tilts his head back, mouth open, knees buckling slightly. He looks positively radiant when he comes, eyes squeezed shut and a sharp, uninhibited yelp of pleasure escaping his lips. Bucky holds his breath, entranced, as the man stands up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and kisses Steve, who’s got the most blissful smile on his face.

A siren yelps a few blocks away, and the two men scramble to redress fully, Steve kissing the other again before they each leave the alley. Bucky stays frozen under the fire escape, watching the other’s tipsy wandering back toward their building. It starts to snow; Bucky dazedly goes home as it starts to melt through his coat. He still doesn’t sleep.

* * *

 

The next few weeks blur by. When Bucky isn’t working twelve-hour days, he’s following guys after they leave the bar and watching them fuck in darkened side streets or drunkenly, guiltily masturbating in bed before showering and trying his hardest to fall asleep before the booze wears off. He barely sees his friends—that is, the ones who aren’t at basic training of already shipped overseas. His boss at the moving company asks if he’s planning on signing up, kindly, quietly, and nodding in understanding when Bucky explains that he’s got someone who needs looking after. But he’s not seeing so much of Steve these days—Steve’s out on the town most nights, often with his coworkers from the newspaper.

It isn’t until he’s distracted at work and slams his hand in the van door that Bucky stops trying to avoid the issue. He’s sent home early by way of his doctor, who doesn’t think it’s broken and warns him to be more careful. Back at his apartment, he waits for the pain pill to kick in, hoping to speed along the process with a glass of bourbon. He waves in and out of sleep for much of the afternoon. The drugs don’t help with the uneasy feeling in his chest.

He waits until Steve gets home, listening carefully to make sure that this isn’t the night Steve decides to bring a guy back to his apartment. Once he’s sure that there isn’t an extra set of footsteps, he tosses back one last mouthful of bourbon and steels himself to go upstairs and knock on Steve’s door.

“Well-timed visit, Buck—just got home.” He can smell the gin on Steve’s breath as the smaller man grins, tugging Bucky inside. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Returning an apologetic smile, Bucky shrugs. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Geez, you don’t gotta worry about it—I haven’t been around that much either.” Steve flops down on the couch, lounging over most of it, leaving Bucky enough room to sit next to him. “You just come by for the heck of it?”

Bucky swallows hard. “Actually, I got something I wanted to talk to you about.”

His face stilling into a serious mask, Steve nods. “I might not be in the best state for a serious talk, just so you know.”

Taking a long pause to choose his words, since he hadn’t planned past this, Bucky finally starts, “Steve, I think I might be—“ before he pauses, making a fist and digging his fingernails into his palm, “I might be like you.”

Steve’s face goes completely blank for a half-second before he recovers with a smirk. Wryly, he asks, “Unfit to serve in the United States Armed Forces?”

Bucky can tell that he knows, that’s trying to give him an out, one last chance to save himself. “In a way, Steve, but—”

“You don’t gotta tell me what it is,” Steve interrupts, shrugging and waving Bucky off. But Bucky does need to tell him, that’s the reason he came by and he’s not going to stop here.

“Would you just listen for one goddamn minute?” he says, raising his voice more than he’d like to, and that gets Steve’s attention. He’s been anxiously chewing at the inside of his cheek all day, and the ferrous taste of blood in his mouth is more overwhelming than ever, and he can’t play this game anymore. “I’m queer, okay?”

The room is quiet again. Bucky’s looking at Steve and Steve’s looking at the floor. When the radiator kicks on, breaking the silence, Steve finally looks up, a smile curling at the corner of his lips. “So you’re tellin’ me that Bucky Barnes, the man who’s been to bed with only the prettiest girls from our high school class, is a sissy?”

“Shit, Steve—I thought if anyone saw through that, it woulda been you.” With a sigh, he shakes his head. “I walked ‘em all home and left all of ‘em on their front steps. The real nice girls got a kiss, but I didn’t—that was never—”

“Relax.” Steve spins around on the couch, dropping his head into Bucky’s lap and looking up at him. He rakes his fingers through his own hair and grins.“What I can’t believe is that you dragged me on dozens of double dates that neither of us were interested in.”

The tightness in his chest is starting to dissipate the longer he talks with Steve. Forcing a smile, he shakes his head. “I mean, dames are alright, and I liked going with them, but the past few months—I’ve been wanting something else.”

He looks down at Steve, who’s still got this tipsy smile on, seemingly not at all fazed by any of this. Steve bites down on his lower lip and raises one eyebrow before asking, “So, who’s the lucky guy?”

“What?”

“Oh, honey.” Steve reaches up and runs the knuckle of his index finger down Bucky’s jawline. He’s not usually this effeminate, but then again, Bucky’s never really talked with him about queer things. “The one who got your attention?”

Shrugging, he replies, “There wasn’t really anyone in particular—I just started noticing guys more, ‘s all.”

Steve’s eyes light up as he brushes his thumb across Bucky’s lips before dropping his hand back into his lap. “So you’ve never even kissed another fella?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Would you like to?”

His heart’s back to pounding in his ears and he’s definitely blushing and somehow, he manages to nod, shifting positions as Steve sits up. The blond kneels on the couch and lays his hand over Bucky’s, smiling. It’s been a long time since Bucky’s kissed anyone, but muscle memory takes over as soon as Steve leans closer and cups the back of Bucky’s head with his hand.

Kissing like Steve is a lot like kissing girls—small and hot and smooth—but there’s a ferocity with him that Bucky’s never encountered before. He even nips and sucks at Bucky’s lower lip before he pulls away, resting their foreheads together. They look at each other for a long few seconds, eyes inches apart.

“Who was your first?”

The corner of Steve’s mouth curls into a smile. “Well,” he starts, tracing his finger in circles over Bucky’s palm, “The first guy I kissed was no one special. But the first one that caught my eye—I’ve known him for a while.” He moves his hand onto Bucky’s thigh as he continues, his voice both coy and desiring. “I thought he was only interested in girls, but I’m just learnin’ that’s not the case.”

Bucky had been wondering if kissing Steve was like kissing all guys, but suddenly, he’s not so interested in finding out about the others.

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt/headcanon by buckyandnat:
> 
> "more pre-war fic where bucky was actually the virginal one who kissed a lot of girls but would walk them home after and give them a sweet little quick peck before going home
> 
> and steve is the one going to queer bars every weekend and hanging out with an “unsavory crowd” and getting blown in dark clubs late at night and kissing all the pretty boys
> 
> and then steve shows bucky what’s it’s like to be kissed by a boy"
> 
>  
> 
> http://avalonjoan.tumblr.com/post/103992472629/buckyandnat-more-pre-war-fic-where-bucky-was


End file.
